


Quintessence

by igrab



Series: Relativity [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Episode: s01e10 The Storm, Episode: s01e11 The Eye, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 02:38:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1534526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrab/pseuds/igrab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Boys had a bro code but girls had one, too, and sometimes that meant asking inane questions that everyone knew the answers to. It was a social contract, and Ronnie was bad at those but for Johanna Sheppard she would make the effort. She wanted to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quintessence

The only times Ronnie _really_ wanted to push Kavanaugh off a tall balcony was when he started complaining that there were _too many girls_ on Atlantis.

Thankfully, she wasn't alone in this exasperation; most of the guys were straight enough to say things along the lines of 'dude, that's the best part' or something equally asinine. The other girls and people who were not jerks also understood that there was actually a fairly even gender ratio, but that it seemed disproportionate due to cultural indoctrination. Or, you know, they just weren't Kavanaugh and didn't see any difference in work quality between a penis and a vagina.

And anyway, try saying that to Jackie O'Neill, or Daniela Jackson, or Samantha Carter. _They_ knew what it was like, trying to reconcile the idea that other people were going to genderize them when all they wanted to do was their goddamn jobs.

Ronnie McKay (because her first name was _off limits_ due to it being dumb and not at all remotely gender-neutral) was, mostly, just trying to do her goddamn job. Most of the time. But sometimes there would be people like Kavanaugh or Colonel Sumner and suddenly there would be a rant pressing in behind her teeth about how she shouldn't have to act like a man to be taken seriously, that her female-ness was not a crime or a liability or even a point of humor. And usually, Ronnie didn't let propriety stop her tongue, but this was different. There was a delicate balance to be struck, here. If she said something, if she defended herself, then it was on her. She'd be opening a can of worms that she'd never be able to close. She did, actually, have a bone of self-preservation, or at least, preservation of jobs that weren't a waste of her time. She still remembered Siberia. She remembered being _bored_.

The worst part, actually, was that she seemed to be the only one having any sort of trouble, sometimes. Dr. Weir was of course an actual goddess who could sail the exact perfect course between her feminine self and authority; Teyla had never had to deal with the kind of gross gender disparity that plagued Earth, and was completely free to wear what she liked and pursue things like cosmetics and curling irons and no one ever accused her of being too emotional.

And Johanna, well.

Ronnie first met Major Sheppard when she was just _Jo_ , a girl in a dark brown ponytail who flew choppers around Antarctica and grinned a private little half-smile when Ronnie complained about cramps. She was just Jo, who almost shot a pair of soldiers in the head because they were giving Ronnie those Looks that meant they'd been in Antarctica too long and they knew what was under that parka. She was just Jo, who, according to the rumors, had been sent to Antarctica in disgrace after being found with an officer's dick in her mouth, or her ass, or both. Ronnie didn't find out until after they'd almost died together in another galaxy that they were all wrong, that it had nothing to do with sex.

Major Sheppard was just Jo, who wore lip gloss and a little bit of eyeliner, but no mascara, because her lashes were 'long and pretty enough', in her own words. Who had her nails painted a different color every time she'd flown a supply run in from McMurdo, then just let them chip away, those first weeks through the Gate.

Ronnie hated that she could do that. That she could leave her ponytail swinging and always had lip gloss in the pocket of her cargo pants, low on her hips, but tight and tucked into her military-grade combat boots. She hated that Jo just plain didn't seem to care when Colonel Sumner had made it very clear that he thought her no better than a whore, that it didn't even make her break stride, and that when she took up his mantle she could just shrug off all that ugliness like an old coat and people _listened_ to her.

That, maybe, was the crux of the matter. Ronnie felt, sometimes, like she'd spent her entire life shouting, that she was constantly shoving words out and trying to make herself _heard_. People noticed, that's for sure. They frequently told her to stop talking, to shut up, to be quiet, to keep her thoughts to herself, the entirety of human existence had told Ronnie that girls don't _do that_. They told her to shut up and she spoke louder but no one was actually listening.

Jo liked Antarctica. That was the kind of thing that stuck in her head, the kind of unruly thought that Ronnie would have loved to be able to delete like an unnecessary file on her mental hard drive, but it remained, stubbornly. It would pop up now and again - _Jo liked Antarctica_ , and for the longest time she could never really puzzle out why it was such a big deal until they were on a planet somewhere and they had to just _wait_ and Ronnie couldn't shut herself up. She kept talking and talking, not even knowing why, until Jo just leaned over as casual as you please and clapped a hand right over Ronnie's wide mouth. She wanted to lick those dumb, pretty fingers that Atlantis loved, that had such a sure, fine touch for a console or a steering array or a nail polish brush. She didn't, but she understood, now, why that thought had never left. Jo liked Antarctica, because she didn't seem to have any problems just... staying still, letting the world wash over her. She could be _content_. 

Ronnie had never once felt content. Elated, miserable, any number of other sharp emotions, but nothing dull, nothing peaceful. Even grief was weighted and angular, digging into her soft parts, never letting her rest. She envied Jo her ability to rest.

That day, on the planet, Jo had sat there for an hour with her hand over Ronnie's mouth and watched her eyes with her own beating a steady hazel-green. They were just as alert as if she was at battle readiness, and Ronnie had been fascinated. Later, she had been shocked to realize that a full hour had passed - instantly launching into a wave of complaints about her ankles and back and people who stare, because, _rude_ \- but even as her mouth moved on automatic, Ronnie could see the twist of Jo's smile, cutting right through the bluster. Weirdly enough, even though the Major didn't hear a word she'd said, she felt more listened to than ever.

It was the storm that did it, though. As if getting shot in the arm wasn't bad enough - and it was - Ronnie had taken the full force of Kolya's leering disapproval, which was worse somehow because it _wasn't_ predicated on the idea that women were inferior - it was just her. He leered at her chest and her hips and all her ample curves and Ronnie just plain wanted to cry, because her arm hurt and she was scared and somewhat hormonal and her chest hurt every time she thought about Johanna, out there in the storm.

She was just so _little_ , she found herself thinking, even though she wasn't, not really, not at all. But Ronnie couldn't stop thinking about Jo's delicate hands and sharp American drawl and how easily it could just be blown away.

And then, well. Then she'd started talking, and Ronnie was the one capsized, by the sheer force of the Major's barely-leashed _rage_.

Ronnie told herself over and over that it had nothing to do with her. _Nothing_. Or, well, obviously her life was in danger and everyone's lives were in danger and _Atlantis_ was in danger so obviously. Of course Major Sheppard would be pissed. It just, it wasn't _personal_.

Ronnie found herself drifting close, as Jo stood at the window and watched the massive tidal forces pound against the shield. As she drew closer, she realized, with a start, that the Major was shaking.

"..... Sheppard?" She didn't, she couldn't trust herself, to say 'Jo' without sounding like five kinds of lovestruck idiot, which, she reminded herself, _she was_. "You okay?"

It was the dumbest, stupidest of questions, but Ronnie didn't care. Boys had a bro code but girls had one, too, and sometimes that meant asking inane questions that everyone knew the answers to. It was a social contract, and Ronnie was bad at those but for Johanna Sheppard she would make the effort. She wanted to.

"No," said Jo, which was not the right answer, startling Ronnie into another few steps forward. They were side by side now, looking out together. Looking at each other in the pale reflection on the glass; staring, more than either of them should. "...The things he said to you - _Ron_ ," and her voice cracked, actually cracked, which Ronnie would never have _ever_ believed possible. Not Johanna Sheppard, keeps-her-cool and devil-may-care, not _Jo_.

"Shut up," Ronnie muttered, which - also not the right thing to say, but _whatever_. They were so far off script they were on another stage altogether. "It's fine. It doesn't - "

"It matters," Jo said, cutting her off with a sharpness to her voice that cut like every feeling Ronnie had ever had. "It fucking matters, Ron, don't you get it? It mattered when it was those fucking assholes down in Antarctica, and it matters when Kavanaugh - Jesus, when he breathes the same _air_ as you, and it matters... it fucking matters, Ronnie. Fuck."

Ronnie was literally, actually speechless for at least five seconds, which was probably a sign of the second coming (if you subscribed to certain antiquated religious beliefs, which Ronnie did not). And when she did speak, it didn't make any much more sense. ".... What? You. What?"

Because, here's the thing. Ronnie knew that Jo wasn't stupid, that she saw and heard everything, so she had to know what the boys said about her, even though they respected her. It fell into that 'mostly harmless' category that actually wasn't harmless at all, but Jo's never once seemed to give it a passing thought, when it was about herself. So, this wasn't about how men are pigs, because fuck knew they both know that. This was something else, and Ronnie just - she couldn't wrap her mind around it. The pieces didn't _fit_.

Jo looked like she wanted to kill something, and for a moment her eyes flicked back to the Stargate, and Ronnie knew she was probably imagining the sixty individual collisions that rocked the iris, and picturing Kolya's face on each one.

"Jo," Ronnie rasped out, and put a hand on her - friend? She didn't even know if they were friends and that was fucking pathetic - _friend_ 's too-tense shoulder. Jo relaxed instantly, letting out a breath, and her eyes snapped back to meet Ronnie's for real now, not just through light refraction.

"It matters," she said, and Ronnie knew in the way that she'd known that the cosmological constant theory was full of shit, that the next time Kavanaugh so much as looked at her, she would say something. She would speak up, not because it bothered her - and it did, but that wasn't the point - but because it was the right thing to do. Because it bothered Johanna and this wasn't a thing where Ronnie just wanted to make her happy (she did, and she'd never said she wasn't selfish, but for once this was not actually the reason), this was because the female experience didn't exist in a vacuum (and if it did, it was definitely in a quintessence mode of vacuum energy because seriously, cosmological constant? seriously?) and if Jo could do it, Ronnie could, too. It wasn't fair, even if the Major was all around better suited, to leave her defense in someone else's hands.

So anyway, they kissed. Ronnie would always, later, mention it like that, as an afterthought. So anyway. Kissing.

(When Jo told the story that was the climax rather than the finale, but what did she know? She wasn't a quantum physicist, she didn't know that they'd been falling steadily closer to one another since they'd met, that their lips meeting was just gravity.)

They kissed, and more importantly, no one catcalled.


End file.
